Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters (42 page)

“The Lamb of God,” said Baby.

“Is that…is that even…remotely ethical?”

“It’s always ethical to protect yourself from a bully,” said Halo.

“But…isn’t this bully…God?”

“An aspect of God, yes.”

“Don’t let that intimidate you,” said Baby.

“I’m intimidated as hell.”

“If you don’t help, he’s going to kill me,” said Baby. “And I don’t mean as one of the faceless billions the angels are going to slaughter. I mean he’s going to rip me limb from limb and personally toss me into the fiery pits of hell.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m the current manifestation of Babylon.”

Seeing the confusion in my face, Halo jumped in. “The Lamb’s judgment ends in a final battle with a woman known as Babylon the Great. She’s the last embodiment of the goddess Ashera, once worshiped throughout the Middle East. She was a goddess of female sexuality, of life and fertility, the embodiment of sexual freedom. Then a band of zealots with a commitment to patriarchy and strong opinions about who should sleep with whom came out of the desert carrying an ark filled with an angry God and wiped out all the tribes that worshipped Ashera.”

“But,” said Baby, “as long as men worship female sexuality, the worship of Ashera continues, even if almost no one knows her name.”

“A lot of men lust after your sister,” said Halo. “Basically, anytime a man downloads nude pictures of Baby, he’s worshipping her, imbuing her with spiritual energy, making a rival god of her.”

“And God is jealous,” said Baby.

“That’s why the Lamb’s heading for New York,” said Halo.

“To find Baby?”

“Because New York harbor is where the most famous idol of Ashera is located.”

“It can’t be that famous. I’ve never heard of it,” I said.

“To the Roman’s, Ashera was worshipped as Libertas,” said Halo.

I was still confused, so Baby spelled things out. “The Statue of Liberty. He’s coming to tear down the Statue of Liberty. And when he gets there, I’m going to be inside.” She tilted back the flask, frowning to find it empty. “And, I’d like to be a lot drunker.”

~

Which brings me back to my perch atop the Statue of Liberty. Did I mention it’s raining blood? And that I’m having to listen to my sister engaging in loud sex in the room below, losing her virginity to a creep like Jude Barnes? News that Baby was a still a virgin took me by surprise. Apparently, by maintaining her virginity, she’s been able to store all the accumulated sexual energy of the mobs who pay tribute to her. It seems that Halo explained all this stuff to her when Baby was still fourteen, when Halo discovered my sister the same way the rest of the world did, via YouTube. Record producers saw a future superstar. Halo saw a goddess waiting to blossom. As to why Jude is her partner, I’m a little fuzzy. Maybe the preacher was the nearest warm male body she wasn’t related to. As to why Jude agreed, I suspect he’s been lusting after Baby all along. Once he learned he hadn’t been raptured, he didn’t have any reason not to give in to his baser instincts.

The Lamb strides closer and keeps getting bigger. I thought I’d be shooting more or less on the level of his eyes, but I’ll be shooting almost straight up. I’m holding out to the last second. I’ve only got one shot.

He’s close enough I can smell those prehensile entrails he’s waving. I pull the trigger.

The bolt is instantly caught by the wind. It’s not only going to miss the eyes, it’s not going to hit at all. Suddenly, Halo’s dark wings unfold from below and she launches herself at the falling bolt. The second her fingers wrap around the shaft she screams. Flames wreath her as she falls from the sky, the bolt clasped against her breasts. The Lamb kicks out with one his cloven hooves, catching Lady Liberty dead center of her chest. There’s a rending sound as the statue
twists on its pedestal. I’m flying through the air, buffeted by the storm, dropping toward the raging waves.

Then Liberty drops the tablet she carries and stretches her arm toward me. Giant green fingers gingerly pluck me from the air as the statue lands feet first in water that, for her, is only knee deep. The statue’s features shift from a stoic stare to a sly grin.

The torch in her other hand flickers, then flares into a blinding light. She rises from her crouch, thrusting the white blaze into the Lamb’s dangling entrails. There’s a horrible sizzling sound and the smell of burnt meat as she stands on tiptoe to twist the torch in the Lamb’s guts. The big guy roars. He grabs her by the crown and lifts her as easily as I could lift a toddler. As she rises, the hand that holds me passes near the now vacant base of the statue and she drops me. I land without breaking my legs, but the whole base is slick with the oily blood. I lose my footing and slide toward the edge before my fingernails find purchase.

Above me, the Lamb holds Liberty above his head with both hands. He roars again and throws her toward the city. She spins head over heels for half a mile before crashing into a skyscraper. Every window in the building shatters as she slides down the face, landing with her limbs limp, the torch guttering in her lap. Her face twists. At first, I think it’s a look of pain, but then she raises her fist and shouts, with a voice like a thousand megaphones, “That all you got?”

The Lamb stomps across the waves in pursuit. She aims her torch and blasts him with a beam of light. By the time he reaches her, his wooly coat has caught fire, but it doesn’t slow him. He grabs her by the throat and slams her into a nearby building. When she keeps fighting, he slams her again, and the whole skyscraper twists and topples.

The Lamb tilts back his head and unleashes a bleat that sounds like sadistic laughter, as if he’s pleased by the falling building. They’re stomping through the financial district. Maybe the Lamb hates Wall Street as much as the next guy. As evidence of that theory, he uses Liberty’s flailing form like a club to batter another building into rubble.

I can’t just stand here and watch this. I don’t know where Halo fell, but I have to try to find her. There’s a big shaft just ahead of me, what’s left of the staircase that used to go up into Liberty’s body. I slip and slide across the bloody rubble, then make a jump for the nearest intact step, a good six feet down. I land less than gracefully but pull myself up and start racing down the steps three at a time.

I find Halo near the bottom, midway to the first landing, crawling. Carrying the bolt hasn’t been good for her health. The voluptuous succubus I met earlier is now little more than a
skeleton. Her skin, once creamy and translucent, is now charred and crispy, falling off in big flakes, revealing a good chunk of her skull.

“You…missed…” she gasps, as she lifts the bolt.

I grab the missile. “Won’t happen again. For one thing, I’ve lost the crossbow.”

“Great,” she says.

“It’s not important,” I say as I get my shoulder under her arm and help her limp out of the building so we can get a view of what’s going on. “With this wind, I’d never make the shot. We need a helicopter or something, some way for me to get above this thing. I’ll jump down and stab him.”

“How…heroic,” she pants.

“Just desperate. Baby’s getting her ass kicked.”

Halo nods. “Prophecy’s hard…to shake. At least we know…she won’t be fighting alone.”

“For all the help we’ve been, she might as well be alone.”

“No.” Halo shakes her head.
“There I saw a woman…sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names…and had seven heads and ten horns.”

“Um,” I say.

“Revelations 17:3.”

Just then, there’s a howl from the other side of the statue’s base. I turn the corner to see the Lamb staggering backward. He’s on fire again. Jets of what look like lava splash against his torso. I strain to find Baby amid the destruction. Their battle has left half of Manhattan flattened. I wonder where she is.

Finally, I spot her. She’s in the sky, riding a dragon with a wingspan so wide the tips disappear among the clouds of smoke. The scaly thing has seven long necks, like a hydra, with its dragon mouths spitting geysers of molten brimstone at the Lamb.

“Is that
—”

“The great dragon,” says Halo. “He has the most to lose if the Lamb wins. If he loses this battle, he’ll be cast in to the pits of hell for all eternity.”

“I don’t think he’s going to lose,” I say. As big as the Lamb is, the dragon is bigger. The creature lands amid the ruins of Manhattan, bracing himself on legs the size of sequoias as he sinks his teeth into the Lamb’s charred flesh. Baby is blasting the Lamb with dazzling beams of light, blinding him. In his agony, the Lamb stumbles, howling. The dragon presses his attack, destroying buildings with each sweep of his massive tail.

The Lamb drops to one knee. He raises both fists, then pounds them against the earth. The ground cracks open, revealing a massive pit of smoke and flame that grows beneath the dragon’s feet. The dragon flaps his wing to fly away, but the Lamb grabs the nearest neck and breaks it, then uses it as a line to reel the beast in, snapping its necks one by one.

Baby’s still on the dragon’s back, holding on for dear life. When this thing goes down, she’s going with it.

“We have to save her,” I shout. “Can you fly us—”

“I can barely stand,” says Halo. “Though…there’s a way to regain some strength.”

“How?”

“Jude wasn’t completely wrong when he called me a succubus.”

“What does—”

“I’m a bit like a vampire,” she explains. “Only instead of sucking your blood, I drink your soul.”

I furrow my brow.

“I won’t drink it all. There’s no time to fully drain you anyway. But a kiss will restore some small portion of what I’ve lost.”

“Take what you need,” I say, closing my eyes.

Her dry, thin lips crackle as they press against mine. She smells like a steak that’s been burnt to a crisp. Her nails dig into my back.

Without warning, her tongue snakes between my teeth, forcing itself down my throat. I gag, but she doesn’t let go. I can’t breath. The world spins. It feels like she’s licking my heart.

She lets go and I drop to my knees. The backs of my hands are wrinkled, aged. My arms look thinner than they did a moment ago.

I look up. She’s not as voluptuous as she was when I first saw her, but she looks filled out, full of life. My life.

“Don’t drop that bolt!” she says, grabbing me by the collar. “Definitely don’t let it touch me!” Her long wings flap and we lift into the air.

Five of the dragon’s heads hang limp.

We lurch across the sky, tossed about by the tempest. My heart rises in my throat as we plummet in a downdraft, but Halo just laughs and folds her wings, diving even faster, until she spreads them wide and we zoom upward.

“I’ve been flying since the dawn of creation,” she boasts, clutching me tighter as we rise above the struggling monsters. “Nothing can touch me in the—”

Her voice cuts short as her arms go limp. As I tumble, I see one of the mounted angels looming above us, his lance jutting from her left breast, wet with gore. I spin and see I’m falling right toward the Lamb. There’s still a tuft of wool relatively intact amid his crown of horns. It’s like landing on a mattress, jarring, but nothing is broken. Was it luck that I’ve fell here, or did Halo aim me?

It doesn’t matter. I scramble on my belly until I’m between the closest eyes.
I gaze out at the destruction, the city blocks flattened, the flames stretching for miles. Any doubt I had about whether fighting this thing was right or wrong vanishes. I rise to my knees, lifting the bolt overhead with both hands and plunge it into the Lamb’s brow with all my strength.

The bolt bounces off. I don’t even scratch him. I nearly lose my balance from the recoil. Why didn’t this work? If this thing is some all powerful weapon…

I eye the braided hair that wraps the tip. Removing it will free the wrath of God. It might make our situation infinitely worse. Or maybe…

The dragon only has one head left. Baby’s still hanging on, unable to do a thing while the Lamb is thrashing the dragon so badly. I’ve no choice.

I tear the hair away with my teeth and strike again.

This time, the bolt plunges into the skin and through the bone as if they were mashed potatoes. I keep pushing until my arm is shoulder deep in the Lamb’s boiling gray matter. The Lamb howls, jerking his head, throwing me into the open air. As I fall, I see the Lamb’s grip on the dragon’s last head weaken. The beast latches on to the Lamb’s throat with a thunderous growl. Lava splashes through his teeth as he blasts brimstone directly into the Lamb’s jugular. But I can’t focus on whether on not this attack is working since I’m plummeting directly toward Hell.

Liberty’s hand juts out and snatches me from the air. She places me atop her crown, then takes her torch in both hands. The Lamb is writhing in agony, his skin bubbling and boiling. There’s a huge smoking crater in his brow, right at the point I pierced him with the bolt. Baby leaps from the dragon’s back and plunges her torch into the crater.

Light explodes from every orifice of the Lamb. He stops howling in agony. He stops everything and simply falls. His ropy entrails entangle the dragon and they both tumble toward the hellfire. Baby makes a jump for the edge of the pit and hooks a single arm across the lip. The ground shakes violently as the Hell pit starts to close.